I love animals

In a quiet alley behind a flower shop, under a rusted tin roof, a stray cat gave birth to four kittens on a cold spring morning.
She was thin, barely more than bones and breath, but her eyes held a fire — soft, wild, and determined. She licked each kitten clean with trembling tenderness, curling her body tightly around them like a blanket stitched from love and instinct.
Her name was never known.
But the shopkeeper, Mrs. Imani, called her Ma, short for Mama, after seeing her for the first time through the shop window.
Every morning, Ma left her nest just long enough to find food — scraps, bits of bread, even petals she chewed when there was nothing else. She never strayed far. Her kittens mewed for her the moment she was gone, and she always returned, slow but sure.
One rainy evening, Mrs. Imani placed a small basket near the alley wall — lined with an old shawl, warm and dry.
She whispered, “Come inside, Ma.”
But Ma didn’t trust people. Not yet.
The next morning, only three kittens remained in the nest.
Panic.
Ma meowed — a cry sharper than anything she had made before — and darted down the alley. Mrs. Imani searched, flashlight in hand, calling softly into storm drains and behind trash bins.
And then they heard it: a faint, desperate cry.
A tiny gray kitten had slipped into a narrow crack between the stones. Trapped. Cold. Barely alive.
Ma was there already, pawing at the space, crying back.
Mrs. Imani knelt and gently worked the kitten free. Ma took it in her mouth, trembling, and carried it back to the nest.
She didn’t leave the alley for three days after that.
She stayed curled around her babies, grooming them, purring like thunder, as if pouring every ounce of her soul into their survival.
And somehow, they lived.
One day, Ma finally accepted the basket.
And from there, into the flower shop.
Mrs. Imani kept all five — the kittens, now playful and fat, and Ma, who had given everything for them.
Sometimes, customers would stop and smile at the sight:
Ma lounging on the counter, eyes half-closed, with her kittens tucked all around her — like petals around a heart.
“She’s just a stray,” someone said once.
But Mrs. Imani shook her head.
“No,” she replied softly. “She’s a mother. That’s something sacred.”
And Ma, with her weathered fur and weary eyes, purred in reply — the quiet song of a love that asks for nothing… and gives everything.

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